Typically 'teaching' is considered a face-to-face activity. It still is, of course, but 'teaching' also takes places via computer-mediated strategies, even with teachers and students not in the same room or even the same country. Teaching and learning is often characterized as SYNCHRONOUS and ASYNCHRONOUS. Synchronous is what we know, in our own experiences, as teaching and learning; it means we as teachers are in the same space and time as our students. Synchronous is the traditional classroom.

Asynchronous may not be a term you normally associate with teaching and learning. It means that the action takes place in a different time and, most likely, different space. The idea of 'teaching' through computer-mediated means that do NOT include real time, face-to-face (F2F) instruction may be a little foreign to us in this class. But it does not mean that we cannot figure out how to make yet another set of instructional strategies work for us!

Let's explore these concepts and the tools we might assign to the categories.

CLOUD COMPUTING The term cloud computing can be confusing, with enough terminology to confuse anyone. Most of us are using some form of cloud computing although we may not be aware of it. Let's take a look at cloud computing and how it might be used professionally and personally.